Podcast appearances and mentions of Robert Olen Butler

In this episode of the Thriving Authors Podcast, it was exciting to talk with Judith Lindbergh about her new historical fiction novel, AKMARAL (and it's so fun that we shared a publication date of May 7th!)  I learned a ton about historical research in our conversation, and her passion for the project comes through so deeply.  Judith also shared: How she began her journey as a writer and what led her to focus on stories drawn from ancient history. What she noticed happening when she didn't allow for the creative and unexpected in her writing. How she was able to nurture and sustain her creativity over a long period of time and the changes she experienced in the publishing industry over that time. What inspired her to start her creative writing community and how it grew over time. I think you'll really enjoy this conversation no matter where you are on your writing journey!And if you are looking to move further along on your journey – or just get started – join me and a small community of like-minded women this summer in Your Book Roadmap! Bring your book to life and truly see yourself as an author. Learn more and register at https://bit.ly/yourbookroadmapAbout Judith: Judith Lindbergh's new novel, AKMARAL, about a nomad woman warrior on the Central Asian steppes in the 5th c. BCE, published by Regal House Publishing on May 7, 2024. Her debut novel, THE THRALL'S TALE, about three women in the first Viking Age settlement in Greenland, was a Booksense (IndieBound) Pick, a Borders Original Voices Selection and praised by Pulitzer Prize winners Geraldine Brooks and Robert Olen Butler. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including in Newsweek, Zibby Magazine, Next Avenue, Writer's Digest, Edible Jersey, Literary Mama, Archaeology Magazine, Other Voices, and UP HERE: The North at the Center of the World published by University of Washington Press. She also contributed to the Smithsonian Institution's exhibition Vikings: The Norse Atlantic Saga and was an expert commentator on the History Channel's documentary series MANKIND: The Story of All of Us. Judith is the Founder/Director of The Writers Circle, a New Jersey-based creative writing center where she regularly teaches aspiring and accomplished writers from ages 8-80. Learn more at https://judithlindbergh.com. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dallas-woodburn/support

Kristof Morrow - Navy veteran, Journalist, and Author - Living and writing with a disability I'm a veteran, author, and journalist that's sold more than 1200 copies of my debut book, “The Second Sun,” after going viral on TikTok in June. Growing up, I was the third born but the first to graduate high school. I was viciously abused by my parents. They both have suffered from some form of addiction. I taught myself to write while serving in the US Navy as a Corpsman right after high school, and after leaving, I learned a University education wasn't for me, despite winning the highest award for short fiction and poetry at two different colleges in their annual creative writing contests. While living in Louisiana, I was hired by a film director to help complete his script and got to work on a film set. I became an EMT around the age of 23, then a 911 dispatcher at 26 before earning, by audition, a job at a newspaper. At this point, I was 27 years old and won awards from two Texas Press Associations for feature writing and photography. Amidst this time and in earlier years, I would exchange letters with Pulitzer Prize winning writer Robert Olen Butler. My diagnosis of Tourette Syndrome led me literally to slapping, punching and clawing myself to success.    

Kristof Morrow - Navy veteran, Journalist, and Author - Living and writing with a disabilityI'm a veteran, author, and journalist that's sold more than 1200 copies of my debut book, “The Second Sun,” after going viral on TikTok in June.Growing up, I was the third born but the first to graduate high school. I was viciously abused by my parents. They both have suffered from some form of addiction.I taught myself to write while serving in the US Navy as a Corpsman right after high school, and after leaving, I learned a University education wasnt for me, despite winning the highest award for short fiction and poetry at two different colleges in their annual creative writing contests. While living in Louisiana, I was hired by a film director to help complete his script and got to work on a film set. I became an EMT around the age of 23, then a 911 dispatcher at 26 before earning, by audition, a job at a newspaper. At this point, I was 27 years old and won awards from two Texas Press Associations for feature writing and photography. Amidst this time and in earlier years, I would exchange letters with Pulitzer Prize winning writer Robert Olen Butler. I later became sober from alcohol, as my Tourette's manifested in a way I could no longer ignore and I spent five years battling worsening symptoms and not writing a word.Several dozen times a day, my ticks force me to slap, punch, and claw myself in the face. It makes me call myself names very loudly that I won't write here, I say I hate myself, and I'm often laughed at in public, (however, it's not malicious) additionally, I've lost much of the feeling in my right hand from chronic swelling and impact injuries, as it compels me to punch hard surfaces around me. I'm currently wearing bandages and tape on two fingers, and a thumb brace from an injury resulting from just that. On October 16, 2021, I surrendered that fight and began writing once more. In February of this year, I published my first book!https://www.amazon.com/Second-Sun-Volumes-II-ebook/dp/B0BW7GF5SY/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1TENPLLLJ24ZO&keywords=kristof+morrow&qid=1698173717&sprefix=%2Caps%2C106&sr=8-1https://www.instagram.com/kristofmorrow/https://www.tiktok.com/@kristofmorrow

Robert Olen Butler, author of the novel “Perfume River,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded in the KPFA studios, October 25, 2016. Robert Olen Butler is the author of several novels and short story collections. His collection,  “A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain” won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The author of sixteen novels and six collections of short stories, his best-known works focus on the legacy of Vietnam, either looking at the war itself or on its aftermath in Vietnam and in America. “Perfume River” tells the story of a Vietnam vet, struggling with his entry to old age, and with his older parents, one of whom has his own secrets from World War II, and with his brother, who ran to Canada rather than be conscripted. Robert Olen Butler also writes a series of thrillers set during World War I featuring reporter Christopher Marlowe Cobb, This interview with Robert Olen Butler was originally posted on January 26th 2017. Two novels have come out since this interview. Paris in the Dark, a Christopher Marlowe Cobb thriller in September 2018 and Late City, published in September 2021. Photos: Kelly Butler/Grove Atlantic. Robert Olen Butler website   The post Robert Olen Butler, “Perfume River,” 2016 appeared first on KPFA.

This is part 2 of a review of the books I've read in 2022! Part one was published on June 21 (episode 52) if you want to listen to that one first. I also update you on how many of the items on my Christmas season bucket list I actually completed. Today's episode includes: #7: An Echo in the Darkness by Francine Rivers https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46601.An_Echo_in_the_Darkness #8: The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53137974-the-good-sister?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=n9xcE6qIie&rank=1 #9: Breakfast at Tiffanys by Truman Capote https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/251688.Breakfast_at_Tiffany_s_and_Three_Stories?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=gIMPm8TdYT&rank=1 #10: Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Zhang https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55987334-four-treasures-of-the-sky?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=84WuTH8vfC&rank=1 #11: As Sure as the Dawn by Francine Rivers https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95621.As_Sure_as_the_Dawn?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=6dJpH80Rgc&rank=1 #12: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/261601.A_Good_Scent_from_a_Strange_Mountain?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=pZp2yHBNek&rank=1 And, still working on: Hero Maker by Dave Ferguson https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35553381-hero-maker?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=BoFVj0cTGG&rank=2 Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Tori Weschler https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22693240-taking-charge-of-your-fertility?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=sBQ1zZjaWa&rank=1 Also Mentioned: Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6668467-winter-garden?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=kgu51k5JQH&rank=1 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/morning-by-morning/message

How's this for fun? Take 27 incredible writers–including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, PEN Awards, Women's Prize for Fiction, Edgar Award, and more–and invite each of them to write an erotic short story. Then publish the collection in one steamy anthology with the authors listed alphabetically at the beginning of the book but none of the stories attributed, so nobody knows who wrote what. We're talking about authors Robert Olen Butler, Louise Erdrich, Julia Glass, Rebecca Makkai, Helen Oyeyemi. Mary-Louise Parker, Jason Reynolds, Paul Theroux, Luis Alberto Urrea, Edmund White, and more. The idea was the brainchild of authors Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, and the book is called Anonymous Sex. In this episode, Hillary and Cheryl join Julie and Eve to discuss the responses they got when they reached out to authors, how the freedom of anonymity allowed authors to write outside their own identities, and what surprised them most about the collection (“there is a lot of cunnilingus in this book”). Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is author of the international bestsellers Sarong Party Girls and A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family. She's also the editor of the fiction anthology, Singapore Noir. Cheryl was a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, In Style, and The Baltimore Sun, and her stories and reviews have also appeared in The New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, The Paris Review, The Washington Post, and Bon Appétit, among others. Hillary Jordan is the author of the novels Mudbound and When She Woke. Mudbound was an international bestseller that won multiple awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed Netflix film that earned four academy award nominations. Hillary is also a screenwriter, essayist, and poet whose work has been published in The New York Times, McSweeney's, and Outside Magazine, among others. Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com. We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more. Book Dreams is a part of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to Book Dreams, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about literature, writing, and storytelling like Storybound and The History of Literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, editors of Anonymous Sex, a collection of 27 explicit sex stories unattributed to the 27 writers listed in the byline. Cheryl, Hillary, and I discuss how exactly you get writers like Louise Erdrich, Rebecca Makkai, Helen Oyeyemi, and Robert Olen Butler to contribute a story when the conceit is sex. We talk about the problem with stale erotica and the search for fresh language with which to talk about sex and desire, the necessity of understanding sex as culturally constructed, and so much more. Hillary Recommends: Michael Cunningham, Flesh and Blood ----. A Home at the End of the World Cheryl Recommends: Fumiko Enchi, Masks ----. The Waiting Years The Novels of Muriel Spark Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, editors of Anonymous Sex, a collection of 27 explicit sex stories unattributed to the 27 writers listed in the byline. Cheryl, Hillary, and I discuss how exactly you get writers like Louise Erdrich, Rebecca Makkai, Helen Oyeyemi, and Robert Olen Butler to contribute a story when the conceit is sex. We talk about the problem with stale erotica and the search for fresh language with which to talk about sex and desire, the necessity of understanding sex as culturally constructed, and so much more. Hillary Recommends: Michael Cunningham, Flesh and Blood ----. A Home at the End of the World Cheryl Recommends: Fumiko Enchi, Masks ----. The Waiting Years The Novels of Muriel Spark Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, editors of Anonymous Sex, a collection of 27 explicit sex stories unattributed to the 27 writers listed in the byline. Cheryl, Hillary, and I discuss how exactly you get writers like Louise Erdrich, Rebecca Makkai, Helen Oyeyemi, and Robert Olen Butler to contribute a story when the conceit is sex. We talk about the problem with stale erotica and the search for fresh language with which to talk about sex and desire, the necessity of understanding sex as culturally constructed, and so much more. Hillary Recommends: Michael Cunningham, Flesh and Blood ----. A Home at the End of the World Cheryl Recommends: Fumiko Enchi, Masks ----. The Waiting Years The Novels of Muriel Spark Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

An interview with Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, editors of Anonymous Sex, a collection of 27 explicit sex stories unattributed to the 27 writers listed in the byline. Cheryl, Hillary, and I discuss how exactly you get writers like Louise Erdrich, Rebecca Makkai, Helen Oyeyemi, and Robert Olen Butler to contribute a story when the conceit is sex. We talk about the problem with stale erotica and the search for fresh language with which to talk about sex and desire, the necessity of understanding sex as culturally constructed, and so much more. Hillary Recommends: Michael Cunningham, Flesh and Blood ----. A Home at the End of the World Cheryl Recommends: Fumiko Enchi, Masks ----. The Waiting Years The Novels of Muriel Spark Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

An interview with Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, editors of Anonymous Sex, a collection of 27 explicit sex stories unattributed to the 27 writers listed in the byline. Cheryl, Hillary, and I discuss how exactly you get writers like Louise Erdrich, Rebecca Makkai, Helen Oyeyemi, and Robert Olen Butler to contribute a story when the conceit is sex. We talk about the problem with stale erotica and the search for fresh language with which to talk about sex and desire, the necessity of understanding sex as culturally constructed, and so much more. Hillary Recommends: Michael Cunningham, Flesh and Blood ----. A Home at the End of the World Cheryl Recommends: Fumiko Enchi, Masks ----. The Waiting Years The Novels of Muriel Spark Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, and a number of other awards, Robert Olen Butler is a master of teaching craft and process. He's taught fiction workshops for decades, most recently at Florida State University. In 2001, Butler released a 34-hour online craft intensive (available on YouTube) which follows him in every step of the process of writing a short story. He's also the author of the craft book From Where You Dream.In this episode, Butler shares some of the highlights of his many years of teaching, including the two epiphanies every novel should contain, the benefits of having a bad memory, how to use the "compost of your imagination," how to approach writing like a method actor, and other insights and advice. Butler also reads from his latest novel, Late City. Butler will be in conversation with Marrie Stone at the Miami Book Fair on Wednesday, November 17, at 12:00 p.m. (ET). You can learn more here.  Download audio.  (Broadcast date: October 27, 2021)

Michael Simon Hall recently completed I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE for HBO, THE POLITICIAN for Netflix, and the lead role in the crime noir thriller WOMEN by Anton Sigurdsson, coming to theaters in 2021. For the stage, Michael collaborated with Pulitzer Award winner Robert Olen Butler playing the lead role in the adaptation of his short story THE IRONWORKERS' HAYRIDE, with music by Emmy award winner Lanny Meyers. Michael currently plays the pivotal role of Rev. James Smith in the new musical HENRY BOX BROWN directed by Tony Award winner Ben Harney, receiving raves at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe before embarking on a tour of the US, which was recently put on hold due to The Pause.

Caroljean Gavin is a writer and editor whose work is forthcoming from Best Small Fictions 2021. Justin Phillip Reed is an American writer and amateur bass guitarist. Robert Olen Butler has published 18 novels and 6 collections of short stories, one of which won the Pulitzer Prize. (Transcript) Welcome to Micro, a podcast for shortContinue reading "Gavin x Reed x Butler" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caroljean Gavin is a writer and editor whose work is forthcoming from Best Small Fictions 2021. Justin Phillip Reed is an American writer and amateur bass guitarist. Robert Olen Butler has published 18 novels and 6 collections of short stories, one of which won the Pulitzer Prize. (Transcript) Welcome to Micro, a podcast for shortContinue reading "Gavin x Reed x Butler"

Robert Olen Butler has published seventeen novels: Late City, The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River and six volumes of short fiction, Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are certain traps us writers fall into. We generalize. We are too abstract. We summarize. We fail at transitions. And a lot of those negative tendencies can quite easily be fixed when you think about them a bit more and learn to recognize them. Scenes are a bit like connected shots in a movie. I think everyone from Blake Snyder to Robert Olen Butler has said this, but they're right. The scene is the basic element of your story. You want to stay in one point of view. Think of it like the camera lens zooming in. In film, the shot is similar, right? You stay in one uninterrupted image for a shot. Right? Then you hook those shots together. A lot of filmmakers, like novelists, use transitions. They move us from one place to the other. Butler defines a scene as “unified actions occurring in a single time or place.” Shots becomes scenes become sequences. There is a beginning, middle, and end to all of these. And then you can have long-shots, close-ups, super close-ups, etc. What we want to do as writers is to use those tools as well (even in first person). We want the extreme close-up of deep POV, but then also to pull back sometimes and see the world and big-picture setting, and then to see that middle distance scene where the character is interacting. When I write YA and adult genre, my first drafts are almost all deep POV and I have to go back in and add those wider shots, sensory details, setting. When I write middle grade, my first drafts are almost all middle shots and long shots, and I have to go back and do those extreme close-ups and close ups and that's okay. What you want to do as a writer is to know where you tend to lean. Are you a big-picture, abstract, distancer? Are you she-who-is-only-into-close-ups? He who does no transitions and only black-out cuts? And you want to layer in those elements that you don't have for effect. When you don't do this, you risk one of two things. If you're a big picture writer with that long-distance point of view, you risk never showing intimacy or immediacy. If you're an extreme close-up writer, you risk never showing the reader that bigger world or big picture and sometimes your story can lack setting so it's all just talking heads and interior monologue. Don't be afraid to mix it up. And don't be afraid to mix up those transitions, those movements between scenes. Sometimes they can be big cuts and scene breaks and chapter breaks, but sometimes they can be softer and gentler transitional words... The rest of the notes are at carriejonesbooks.blog SHOUT OUT! The music we've clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here's a link to that and the artist's website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It's “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free. LINKS WE MENTION IN OUR RANDOM THOUGHTS Angel shots. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/bartender-explains-what-angel-shot-24605557 Nudist cruise. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/couples-anniversary-dinner-interrupted-nudist-24612029 Weird image on the CCTV. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mum-calls-priest-bless-home-24611677 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/carriejonesbooks/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/carriejonesbooks/support

We generalize.We are too abstract.We summarize.We fail at transitions. And a lot of those negative tendencies can quite easily be fixed when you think about them a bit more and learn to recognize them. Scenes are a bit like connected shots in a movie. I think everyone from Blake Snyder to Robert Olen Butler has said this, but they're right. The scene is the basic element of your story. You want to stay in one point of view. Think of it like the camera lens zooming in. In film, the shot is similar, right? You stay in one uninterrupted image for a shot. Right? Then you hook those shots together. A lot of filmmakers, like novelists, use transitions. They move us from one place to the other. Butler defines a scene as “unified actions occurring in a single time or place.” Shots becomes scenes become sequences. There is a beginning, middle, and end to all of these. And then you can have long-shots, close-ups, super close-ups, etc. What we want to do as writers is to use those tools as well (even in first person). We want the extreme close-up of deep POV, but then also to pull back sometimes and see the world and big-picture setting, and then to see that middle distance scene where the character is interacting. When I write YA and adult genre, my first drafts are almost all deep POV and I have to go back in and add those wider shots, sensory details, setting. When I write middle grade, my first drafts are almost all middle shots and long shots, and I have to go back and do those extreme close-ups and close ups and that's okay. What you want to do as a writer is to know where you tend to lean. Are you a big-picture, abstract, distancer? Are you she-who-is-only-into-close-ups? He who does no transitions and only black-out cuts? And you want to layer in those elements that you don't have for effect. When you don't do this, you risk one of two things. If you're a big picture writer with that long-distance point of view, you risk never showing intimacy or immediacy. If you're an extreme close-up writer, you risk never showing the reader that bigger world or big picture and sometimes your story can lack setting so it's all just talking heads and interior monologue. And don't be afraid to mix up those transitions, those movements between scenes. Sometimes they can be big cuts and scene breaks and chapter breaks, but sometimes they can be softer and gentler transitional words like - Then there are the phrases that show us a change in location: And so on. Sometimes though, us writers tell our readers TOO much and it ends up sounding like script or stage directions. Those are things that slow the narrative down and just read a bit awkward or stilted. It would be a sentence like: Or: Instead you just want the transition to get us there into the juicy part of the scene: It doesn't really add to the story.It doesn't really add to the character.It's unnecessary information. Show your character's inner state/characterization/choicesMove the plot forward.Set the reader in the moment The key here is this: Don't use the same transition every time. Don't even use the same transition technique every time. Mix it up. Good story is about variety. Do long shots. Close-ups. Location transitions, big cuts, fade-outs, scene transitions. Don't be boring in life either. Carrie had the epiphany that she's tried to fit in with other writers for far too long, clinging to the idea that she can't be as weird and dorky as she is. No more, my friends. Her witch cackle is coming out. Angel shots. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/bartender-explains-what-angel-shot-24605557 Nudist cruise. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/couples-anniversary-dinner-interrupted-nudist-24612029 Weird image on the CCTV. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mum-calls-priest-bless-home-24611677

A man dies and finds himself reincarnated as a parrot.   This story appears in Robert Olen Butler's collection TABLOID DREAMS. His forthcoming novel, LATE CITY, will be published in September.   Content advisory: use of a slur See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chris Haven teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and was listed in Best American Short Stories 2020. Sudha Balagopal's flash fiction appears in journals worldwide, has been nominated for several awards, and is listed in the Wigleaf Top 50. Robert Olen Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for a bookContinue reading "Haven x Balagopal x Butler" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris Haven teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and was listed in Best American Short Stories 2020. Sudha Balagopal’s flash fiction appears in journals worldwide, has been nominated for several awards, and is listed in the Wigleaf Top 50. Robert Olen Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for a bookContinue reading "Haven x Balagopal x Butler"

Blake Kimzey founded and directs Writing Workshops Dallas & Writing Workshops Paris and is a co-founder of The Big Texas Read. Named one of D Magazine's Artists to Learn From, he is a graduate of the MFA Program at UC Irvine; Blake also sits on the Board of the Elizabeth George Foundation and received a generous Emerging Writer Grant from the Foundation. Blake discusses self-censorship, giving yourself permission to write, and the value of consuming other people’s lived experiences.His fiction has been broadcast on NPR, performed on stage in Los Angeles, and published by Tin House, McSweeney’s, VICE, Longform, The Los Angeles Review, and The Masters Review, Booth, and selected by Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions 2015. Blake’s collection of short tales, Families Among Us, an Indie Bestseller, was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2014. He is working on his first novel and is represented by Ryan Harbage. He has taught in the Creative Writing Programs at SMU, UT-Dallas, and UC-Irvine. Follow him on Twitter @BlakeKimzey.Originally recorded on September 17, 2020Host, Earlina Green Hamilton

Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels, amongst them A Small Hotel and Perfume River, as well as A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 2013, he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. His stories have appeared widely in publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, The Paris Review, and many more. Butler's works have been translated into twenty-one languages, a few of which include Vietnamese, Serbian, Farsi, Estonian, and Chinese. He is a Krafft Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He lives in Florida with his wife, poet Kelly Lee Butler. www.robertolenbutler.com www.creativeprocess.info

Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels, amongst them A Small Hotel and Perfume River, as well as A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 2013, he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. His stories have appeared widely in publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, The Paris Review, and many more. Butler's works have been translated into twenty-one languages, a few of which include Vietnamese, Serbian, Farsi, Estonian, and Chinese. He is a Krafft Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He lives in Florida with his wife, poet Kelly Lee Butler. www.robertolenbutler.com www.creativeprocess.info

The second summer of conversations recorded at the Sewanee Writers' Conference continues with Tim O'Brien, who tells James about winning the National Book Award, writing THE THINGS THEY CARRIED while on a break from another book, not leaving a sentence until it's finished, being a father, knowing death, and recognizing the maybeness of it all. Plus, Missouri Review editor Speer Morgan.      http://www.sewaneewriters.org/ 2020 Applications due March 15! - Tim O'Brien  Buy Tim's books: Buy Tim O'Brien's Books From Independent Booksellers Tim and James discuss:  Sewanee Writers' Conference  Dan O'Brien  Christine Schutt  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving  THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER by John Cheever  Lizzie Borden  Jack the Ripper  "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor  "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" by Joyce Carol Oates  WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy  THE BIBLE  BILLY BUDD, SAILOR by Herman Melville  Wyatt Prunty  Emily Nemens  Ernest Hemingway  - Speer Morgan: https://www.missourireview.com/ Speer and James discuss:  Middlebury College  The New England Review  Greg Michaelson  Jack Kerouac  Mark Twain  Tennessee Williams  Christine Schutt  The Dead Sea Scrolls  Kris Somerville's Curio Cabinet  Mike McClaskey Dan O'Brien  "Fields of Empire" by Joan Silber  Daniel Woodrell Susan Vreeland  Joanna Scott  Raymond Carver  Robert Olen Butler  Naguib Mahfouz Gregory Rabassa  Philip K. Dick  Ursula Le Guin  Russell Banks  PBS  Henry Green Robert Bly  Stephen Dunn  TR Hummer  Dave Smith  Annie Proulx Edmund White  Ernest Gaines  Larry Brown  John Updike  Margaret Walker  Peter Matthiessen  Richard Ford  "Awakening to Jake" by Jillian Weiss  Henry James  Edith Wharton  CHERNOBYL  "Snow" by Kermit Frazier  A FAITHFUL BUT MELANCHOLY ACCOUNT OF SEVERAL BARBARITIES LATELY COMMITTED by Jason Brown "Those Deep Elm Brown's Ferry Blues" by William Gay  -  Music courtesy of Bea Troxel from her album, THE WAY THAT IT FEELS: https://www.beatroxel.com/ -  http://tkpod.com / tkwithjs@gmail.com / Twitter: @JamesScottTK /Instagram: tkwithjs / FB: https://www.facebook.com/tkwithjs/

Stories are about people having emotions. Writers who write from their heads (outlining like crazy, etc,) are often missing out on the emotion because they are analyzing how to show emotion.  But it’s desire and yearning that makes stories stand out and makes writers into artists and truth tellers.  Robert Olen Butler says that yearning … Continue reading "Florida Man and the Queen of Kittens"

Stories are about people having emotions. Writers who write from their heads (outlining like crazy, etc,) are often missing out on the emotion because they are analyzing how to show emotion. But it’s desire and yearning that makes stories stand out and makes writers into artists and truth tellers. Robert Olen Butler says that yearning creates a dynamic of desire and that dynamic of desire creates plot and story. The need, the yearning, the want, is something that needs to bleed out into the page and it does. It does. Good stories have two epiphanies in them that use this yearning. The first epiphany shows up early in the story where all the details culminate to show the reader what it is that the main character wants. The reader gets it, responds, relates, understands and yearns for it too – yearns for it enough to turn the page and keep reading. The second epiphany is basically the climax or the story’s crisis. The main character is fully committed to her desire and she is at that make-or-break point and we’re there with her. The difference between regular books and books that rock your soul is that they are about wants, not about yearnings. Yearnings are bigger than wants. They are the desire of the inside. The foe blocks that desire, that attempt to fulfill yearnings. The character responds. And that is plot. Writers Tip of the Pod Make your characters yearn. Dog Tip For Life Go after what you yearn for. Random Thoughts In our random thoughts this week you get to hear: Shaun fail to see his beer advent calendar The Queen of Kittens talk about BTX Florida Men and the things you do Christmas Tree success. SHOUT OUT The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free. WRITING NEWS LEARN WITH ME AT THE WRITING BARN! The Write. Submit. Support. format is designed to embrace all aspects of the literary life. This six-month course will offer structure and support not only to our writing lives but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors. We will discuss passes that come in, submissions requests, feedback we aren’t sure about, where we are feeling directed to go in our writing lives, and more. Learn more here! “Carrie’s feedback is specific, insightful and extremely helpful. She is truly invested in helping each of us move forward to make our manuscripts the best they can be.” “Carrie just happens to be one of those rare cases of extreme talent and excellent coaching.” IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, ORDER NOW! My new book, IN THE WOODS, is out! Gasp! It’s with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/carriejonesbooks/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/carriejonesbooks/support

Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels, amongst them A Small Hotel and Perfume River, as well as A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 2013, he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. His stories have appeared widely in publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, The Paris Review, and many more. Butler's works have been translated into twenty-one languages, a few of which include Vietnamese, Serbian, Farsi, Estonian, and Chinese. He is a Krafft Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He lives in Florida with his wife, poet Kelly Lee Butler.www.robertolenbutler.comwww.creativeprocess.info

Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels, amongst them A Small Hotel and Perfume River, as well as A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 2013, he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. His stories have appeared widely in publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, The Paris Review, and many more. Butler's works have been translated into twenty-one languages, a few of which include Vietnamese, Serbian, Farsi, Estonian, and Chinese. He is a Krafft Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He lives in Florida with his wife, poet Kelly Lee Butler.www.robertolenbutler.comwww.creativeprocess.info

Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and sixteen other novels including Hell, A Small Hotel, Perfume River, and the Christopher Marlowe Cobb series. He is also the author of six short story collections and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and received the 2013 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University. His latest novel is Paris in the Dark. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Summary: F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival organizers Dr. Jackson Bryer and Dr. Eleanor Heginbotham, as well as Twinbrook Library Manager Eric Carzon, talk about the upcoming festival, as well as the life, work, and Montgomery County connections of jazz-era author F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Recording Date: August 9, 2018 Guests: Dr. Jackson Bryer, author of several books about F. Scott Fitzgerald and one of the founding organizers of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival. Eric Carzon: Branch Manager of Twinbrook Library and MCPL liaison to the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival.  Dr. Eleanor Heginbotham, Professor Emerita of Concordia University Saint Paul and one of the organizers of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival.  Host: Lauren Martino What Our Guests Are Reading: Dr. Jackson Bryer: Benediction by Kent Haruf, Clock Dance by Anne Tyler Eric Carzon: The Poet Slave of Cuba by Margarita Engle Dr. Eleanor Heginbotham: The books of Richard Russo and Robert Olen Butler.  Books, Authors, and Other Media Mentioned During this Episode: "Babylon Revisited" by F. Scott Fitzgerald John Barth Bernice Bobs Her Hair (film): Based on a short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald Jennifer Boylan Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo Robert Olen Butler Susan Coll Malcolm Cowley The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (film): Based on a short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald E.L. Doctorow Empire Falls by Richard Russo  Everybody's Fool by Richard Russo F. Scott Fitzgerald  Richard Ford The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This famous book has had numerous film adaptations.  Garrison Keillor  Norman Mailer   Alice McDermott E. Ethelbert Miller Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo Maxwell Perkins Annie Proulx Richard Russo Trajectory by Richard Russo Straight Man by Richard Russo James Salter William Styron Margaret Talbot Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald John Updike The Vegetable, or From President to Postman (play) by F. Scott Fitzgerald "Winter Dreams" by F. Scott Fitzgerald Other Items of Interest Mentioned During this Episode:  The Elevator Repair Service Theater Company: Performs original works with an ongoing ensemble.  F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival: This literary festival features writing workshops, panel discussions, the presentation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award to a prominent author (the 2018 recipient is Richard Russo), and much more. The festival honors the works of jazz-era author F. Scott Fitzgerald and as well as the work of current, prominent authors. The festival also supports and encourages aspiring writers and students interested in the literary arts. The festival takes place Saturday, October 20, 2018 at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, MD. There is an opening lecture by National Book Foundation Executive Director Lisa Lucas on Thursday, October 18, as well as a special event Friday evening, October 19,"Readings in Tribute to Richard Russo and Literature Without Borders." MCPL will host several Fitzgerald related programs before the festival begins.  Friends of the Library, Montgomery County: A nonprofit organization that supports MCPL by providing supplemental funding, programs, materials, and equipment.  Kanopy: MCPL's free, online movie streaming service. Includes film festival favorites, award-winning documentaries, indie films and world cinema.  The Writer's Center: A literary organization in Montgomery County, MD hosting writing workshops and literary events to promote the craft of writing for people of all backgrounds.   Read the transcript

Neil White has been a newspaper editor, magazine publisher, advertising executive and federal prisoner. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, where he operates a small publishing company, writes plays and essays, and teaches memoir writing. His memoir, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts (Morrow/HarperCollins), about the year he lived with the last victims of leprosy in the continental United States, was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “Brisk, ironic, perceptive . . . White’s introspective memoir puts a magnifying glass to a flawed life, revealing that all of life is to be savored and respected.” Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler added, “At once surreal and grittily naturalistic, funny and poignant, White’s tale is fascinating and full of universal resonance.” In the Sanctuary of Outcasts was a finalist in the 2010 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance “Book of the Year” award. In 2010, White won the Outstanding Author of the Year from the Southern Library Association. Barnes & Noble honored White as one of the top three emerging nonfiction authors in America through their “Discover Great New Writers” program. Foreign language translations of In the Sanctuary of Outcasts have been published in Germany, Croatia and the Netherlands. Sanctuary was on the Southern Independent bestseller list for nearly four years. The book was selected for Baton Rouge’s One Book, One Community program. It was also selected for the common reading experience at Davidson College, Hilbert College, St. Bonaventure University and Michigan Tech. White’s essays have appeared in dozens of literary journals and magazines. He has contributed to The Oxford American, National Geographic and The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. White serves as Creative Director & Publisher at The Nautilus Publishing Company. He has published and edited more than 30 books. Most recently, he edited Robert Khayat’s The Education of a Lifetime. In 2014, the book was honored with the IPPY Silver Award for the best national memoir published by a small press. White is married to Deborah Hodges Bell, the Interim Dean of the law school at The University of Mississippi. They have three children — Lindsay Bell, Neil White IV, and Maggie White.

Sarah Barbour is a book coach and editor for Entrepreneurs with stories to tell. She helps authors get focused on their goals and audience, establish a realistic timeline for their book, keep them accountable to their writing targets, and walk them through the self-publishing process.   Quotes To Remember: “A book is a really nice opportunity to get to know someone on a slightly deeper level.” “Pretty much everyone hits a wall at some stage.” “There’s always a stage where you think: I just can’t do this” “Get it all out….then you can start the process of organizing it.” “Once you hear that information, rather than seeing it, you get a different perspective from it.” “What if I write this book and no-one reads it?”   What You’ll Learn: How to get started writing successfully How to choose a good solid book topic Why it’s good to hire beta readers and editors Why it’s a good idea to allow time between finishing a book and publishing it How to approach and deal with writer’s block Why continuously writing helps you to find the content you like   Key Links From The Show: www.adventure.ink/ Episode 50 - Jeff Goins   Recommended Books: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff GoinsFrom Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler

To be clear, right from the start, the point of this week's episode is not to call Robert Olen Butler a fraud. In fact we both quite enjoyed his story, "Mid-Autumn," from his 1992 collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. But it occurred to us that if this book were published today, it might get a few more sideways glances, since it's a white American author telling the first-person stories of Vietnamese immigrants and refugees. So we thought it could be a good jumping-off point for a discussion of where those lines are. Should writers be able to tell whatever stories they want, as Lionel Shriver famously argued last year? At what point should we be concerned about issues of cultural appropriation? In the second half of the show, we talk about the case of Michael Derrick Hudson, who in 2015 set off a lit-world firestorm when he admitted he'd submitted a poem to a bunch of journals using a fake Chinese name. One of those poems was eventually selected by Sherman Alexie to be part of the Best American Poetry anthology for that year, at which point Hudson came clean, and Alexie did some soul-searching. Thanks for listening! Come on back next week!

This week we're discussing an A.M. Homes story about an adolescent boy who starts "dating" his sister's Barbie. Also, we revisit the time Robert Olen Butler went viral for the wrong reasons (losing his wife to Ted Turner), we remember HBO's Real Sex, and Mike gives some dating advice, this time on "ghosting." For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

Robert Olen Butler, author of the novel “Perfume River,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. Robert Olen Butler is the author of several novels and short story collections. His collection,  “A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain” won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The author of sixteen novels and six collections of short stories, his best-known works focus on the legacy of Vietnam, either looking at the war itself or on its aftermath in Vietnam and in America. “Perfume River” tells the story of a Vietnam vet, struggling with his entry to old age, and with his older parents, one of whom has his own secrets from World War II, and with his brother, who ran to Canada rather than be conscripted. Robert Olen Butler also writes a series of thrillers set during World War I. Robert Olen Butler website A shorter version of this interview was heard on Bookwaves. The post Robert Olen Butler appeared first on KPFA.

We explore how 1916 has been explored in Jaki Irvine's IMMA exhibition, what goes through your mind in those final moments of death with author Robert Olen Butler.

Thriller writers Lee Child, Megan Abbott and Lawrence Block discuss their new collection of short stories inspired by the paintings of American artist Edward Hopper. The anthology, In Sunlight or in Shadow, also includes stories by Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Olen Butler.English National Opera's CEO Cressida Pollock discusses the company's recent struggles, which have seen stringent funding cuts, strikes and, most recently, the postponement of a season in Blackpool.Tim Robey reviews the film The Pass, about two young professional football players whose kiss echoes through the next ten years of both their lives.ITV's new drama, In Plain Sight, is based on the true story of Scottish serial killer, Peter Manuel and the attempts of Lanarkshire detective William Muncie to bring him to justice in the 1950s. The writer Nick Stevens and actor Martin Compston, who plays Manuel, discuss the challenges of making a drama about real life crime.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Rachel Simpson.

Clint Eastwood's latest film Sully tells the story of Captain Chesley Sullenberger who landed an airliner on New York's Hudson river in 2009. Critic Angie Errigo discusses how Eastwood's 35th film as a director fits into his remarkable career.Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler discusses his latest book, Perfume River, which explores how the Vietnam war resonates down the generations. Roger Law used to make the puppets for Spitting Image, the satirical TV show which poked fun at celebrities and politicians showing them with grotesque mouths and rheumy eyes. Now he makes porcelain vases and plates portraying Weedy Sea-Dragons and Long-nosed Poteroos. As his exhibition Transported opens at The Scottish Gallery, in Edinburgh, he explains why he's made the change.Last month, the Culture Secretary announced that the British Army would establish a specialist cultural property protection unit. As the bill comes closer to becoming law, Lt Colonel Tim Purbrick, an art dealer and British army reservist who was a tank commander during the Desert Storm campaign, discusses how such a unit could work.

Robert Olen Butler back to the program today. Bob is one of America's most acclaimed writers of fiction, having not only won many literary honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, but he also had prize for short fiction named in his honor, which was award five times in the early 2000s. Early in his writing career, Butler wrote fiction about the Vietnam conflict from several different angles, and in his latest novel, Perfume River, he looks about how this war, and even wars before and since, have influenced the Quinlan family.

Word of the Day: StoryHow mountain people feel about storyStory as the language for passing down skills and religionGreenberry House, Meadows of Dan, The story of Greenberry House and how it all happened, with the German Angoras from ISeeSpots Farm in Greensboro, North Carolina.Beth's Australian adventure - fishing in the Indian Ocean, 1975Aussie Glouchester Tree that Beth climbed, Western Australia, 1975. Quite an adventure coming back down!The story of how teenaged Beth went to Mondaring, Western Australia with the Rotary Club Exchange Student Program.A Little Sweet...Leslie on connecting knitting with story: Kathleen's moss stitch sweater using hand dyed wool spun into a two ply sport weight yarn.Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, read by Jennifer EhleBeth on her talk, "Postcard 101" For the Reynold's Homestead Postcard ClubA Little Tart...Forever Grateful by Silas TurmanBook Reviews:Forever Grateful by Silas TurmanFrom Edwin, to Miss Nellie Ludwig, Germantown, PennsylvaniaHad a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards by Robert Olen Butler, including a visit with Beth's collection of postcards following Edwin's courtship of Miss Nellie Ludwig.So romantic!A Little Unexpected...The Stories of a West Virginia Doctor by Harold AlmondThe girls decide to avoid the local controversies in favor of a sweet story, read by Beth, from her father's book, The Stories of a West Virginia Doctor, by Harold Almond. There is discussion of the changes that fall is bringing to Meadows of Dan, eating local from the Farmers' Markets in Stuart and in Floyd. Reference to the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Your hosts will return in two weeks with a new word of the day.Music Attributionby cdkfeaturing oldDogSilence Awaitccmixter.org/files/cdk/17432CC Attribution (3.0)

The Given World (Simon & Schuster)  Spanning over twenty-five years of a radically shifting cultural landscape, The Given World is a major debut novel about war's effects on those left behind, by an author who is "strong, soulful, and deeply gifted" (Lorrie Moore, "New York Times" bestselling author of Birds of America).  In 1968, when Riley is thirteen, her brother Mick goes missing in Vietnam. Her family shattered, Riley finds refuge in isolation and drugs until she falls in love with a boy from the reservation, but he, too, is on his way to the war. Riley takes off as well, in search of Mick, or of a way to be in the world without him. She travels from Montana to San Francisco and from there to Vietnam. Among the scarred angels she meets along the way are Primo, a half-blind vet with a secret he can't keep; Lu, a cab-driving addict with an artist's eye; Phuong, a Saigon barmaid, Riley's conscience and confidante; and Grace, a banjo-playing girl on a train, carrying her grandmother's ashes in a tin box. All are part of a lost generation, coming of age too quickly as they struggle to reassemble lives disordered by pain and loss. At center stage is Riley, a masterpiece of vulnerability and tenacity, wondering if she'll ever have the courage to return to her parents' farm, to its ghosts and memories--resident in a place she has surrendered, surely, the right to call home. Praise for The Given World: In The Given World, Marian Palaia has assembled a collection of restive seekers and beautifully told their stories of love and lovelessness, home and homelessness, with an emphasis on both makeshift and enduring ideas of family. It has been a long time since a first book contained this much wisdom and knowledge of the world. She has a great ear for dialogue, a feel for dramatic confrontation, and a keen understanding of when background suddenly becomes foreground. She is a strong, soulful, and deeply gifted writer--Lorrie Moore, author of Bark "The Given World is astonishing in every regard: the voice, the range of characters, the charismatic, colloquial dialogue, the ability to summon, through telling detail, geographically diverse worlds that are far flung, but still cohere. Vietnam, counter-cultural San Francisco, the Vietnam War draft's resonance on a Montana reservation, all give evocative shape and texture to an historical era. It's edgy, often cutting, humorous, and impassioned.--Rob Nixon From the moment I met Riley I was drawn into her world, which is really ours, America in the last century as it careened into this one. I found this novel as thrilling and surprising as a ride on a vintage motorcycle, along the winding, sometimes hair-raising but always arresting ride that is Riley's life. It is a trip I will always remember.--Jesse Lee Kercheval, author ofMy Life as a Silent Movie "Marian Palaia has imaginatively engaged the Vietnam War these many decades later and transformed it into a brilliant and complex narrative able to transcend that war, all wars, all politics, all eras and illuminate the great and eternally enduring human quest for self, for an identity, for a place in the universe. The Given World is a splendid first novel by an exciting new artist."--Robert Olen Butler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize "Marian Palaia is a writer of remarkable talent. In Riley, she has captured Vietnam's long shadow with prose that cuts straight to the bone. Readers who enjoyed Jennifer Egan's The Invisible Circus will love The Given World.--Suzanne Rindell, author of The Other Typist "Not all the American casualties of Vietnam went to war. In stunning, gorgeous prose, in precise, prismatic detail, Palaia begins with that rupture and works her way deep into the aftermath -- its impact on one person, on one family, on one country. Riveting and revelatory."--Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves "Some rare books give you the sense that a writer has been walking around with a story for years, storing it up, ruminating on it. This is one of those books. I'm grateful for the slow and patient emergence of these words on the page. No sentence is wasted. However long The Given World took, it was worth every minute."--Peter Orner, author of The Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge "Marian Palaia is a writer of startling grace and sensuous lyricism--reading her, you feel as if you've never heard language this beautiful and this true."--Jonis Agee, author of The River Wife Marian Palaia was born in Riverside, California, and grew up there and in Washington, DC. She lives in San Francisco and has also lived in Montana, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, and Nepal, where she was a Peace Corps volunteer. She is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received the 2012 Milofsky Prize. She was a 2012-2013 John Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University and is a recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been published in The Virginia Quarterly Review and TriQuarterly. Marian has also been a truck driver, a bartender, and a logger.

One of the most versatile writers working today, Ron Franscell has traversed the open range of journalism, fiction and nonfiction with extraordinary success. His lyrical but muscular prose has been compared to that of Robert Olen Butler, Cormac McCarthy, and Charles Frazier.  His journalism has won several national awards, including the Associated Press Managing Editors’ national Freedom of Information Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editor’s Best in the West Award, and four Pulitzer Prize candidates.  And he has frequently appeared as a true-crime commentator on CNN, NPR, Fox News, and crime documentaries on Investigation Discovery, History Channel, and A&E.

Two well-loved children's books have been adapted for television - Roald Dahl's Esio Trot and The Boy in the Dress by comedian and author David Walliams. Children's book editor Julia Eccleshare discusses whether the characters in the novels come to life on the small screen. Razia Iqbal talks to Pulitzer prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler who has turned his hand from literary fiction to writing espionage thrillers. He discusses The Hot Country, his new historical novel about an American journalist reporting on the Mexican Revolution. Sony has cancelled the release of The Interview, a comedy starring James Franco and Seth Rogan that pokes fun at North Korea, after threats from hackers. US film critic Matt Prigge has seen The Interview and discusses its merits as a film. Years ago Richard and Linda Thompson were a great musical partnership but then they got divorced. Now their son Teddy has brought them together with their daughter, Kami Thompson and her husband James Walbourne, another son, Jack Thompson, and grandson Zak. The Thompson Family have made an album together called - inevitably - 'Family'. Razia meets Richard, Teddy and Kami as they prepare to perform it live. Presenter: Razia Iqbal Producer: Olivia Skinner.

Treasure Island is The National Theatre's seasonal offering at The Olivier, full of pirates, parrots and seaspray. How does it play to the various audiences who come to the theatre at Christmas time? Electricity is a film starring model turned actress Agyness Deyn whose character deals with her epilepsy as she tries to find a community to be a part of. Charlie Brooker is back with a one-off feature-length Christmas special edition of Black Mirror on Channel 4. It's a worrying look at a future world that may be closer to our present world than we expect. It's guaranteed to inject some darkness into the joviality of Christmas Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler's latest novel is The Hot Country; a historical thriller set in Mexico in 1914 with a hardbitten journalist as hero The V+A has an exhibition of Dolls Houses - from 1670 to 2001. They're a world of wonder in miniature. How do they reflect the society of the children for whom they were made? Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Deborah Bull, Neil Brand and Misha Glenny. The producer is Oliver Jones.

The Lotus and The Storm (Viking Books) An epic tale of love, loyalty, and war from the acclaimed author of Monkey Bridge.   Alternating between the voice of Mai, a Vietnamese-American woman and law librarian in the DC area and her father, Minh, a former commander of the airborne brigade in the South Vietnamese army, The Lotus and the Storm transports us to one family's past in Saigon during the war while at the same time showing us how the drama of what began in Vietnam nearly 40 years previous continues to play out in US Vietnamese refugee communities.   The book opens in 1963 in Cholon, Saigon's twin city, where Mai carves out a wondrous existence of innocence shared with her elder sister and a large group of family and friends, including several Chinese business women, U.S. servicemen and even an uncle in the Vietcong who makes secret visits to the family home. Their life is largely tranquil and lush, continuing relatively unaffected by the war until a series of explosive events rock their world, ultimately leading to Mai and her father's evacuation by U.S. helicopter during the fall of Saigon.  The story of Mai's father Minh begins in 2006, when the U.S. is in the thick of another prolonged armed conflict and Minh relives his battles in Saigon, Da Nang, and Hue as the television switches between scenes of fighting in Baghdad and Basra. Day by day, he unravels his life's story through its most defining moments: from the assassination of President Diem in 1963 to the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975. Each event is punctuated by irreparable personal loss. His is a story of lost innocence, of broken promises, and of sudden reversals in love and war. Working across a broad and astonishing canvas, Lan Cao has delivered in The Lotus and the Storm a truly epic drama of love, loyalty, and the legacies of war, and offers a rarely heard Vietnamese-American perspective on events that have been central to twentieth-century American history..  Praise for The Lotus and The Storm"The Lotus and the Storm is part beautiful family saga, part coming-of-age story, part love story, but above all a searing indictment of the American campaign in Vietnam and its incalculable toll on generations past and future. A powerful read from start to end."--Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner "A profoundly moving novel about the shattering effects of war on a young girl, her family, and her country. Lan Cao brings Saigon's past vividly to life through the eyes of Mai, following the girl and her father halfway around the world to a suburb in Virginia, where forty years later, Mai's trauma unravels. In this fractured world where old wars, loves, and losses live on, The Lotus and the Storm is a passionate testament to the truth that the past is the present--inseparable, inescapable, enduring."--Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being "A heartwrenching and heartwarming epic about war and love, hurt and healing, losing and rediscovering homelands. Lan Cao dramatizes landmark battles in the Vietnam War and the toll such battles take on winners and losers. The Lotus and the Storm establishes Lan Cao as a world-class writer."--Bharati Mukherjee, author of Jasmine "Lan Cao is not only one of the finest of the American writers who sprang from and profoundly understand the war in Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora, but also one of our finest American writers, period. The Lotus and the Storm is a brilliant novel that illuminates the human condition shared by us all."--Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain Lan Cao grew up in Saigon and her own father was a high-ranking paratrooper in the South Vietnamese army. In 1975, when South Vietnam was defeated by the Communist North, she was adopted by an American friend of the family and taken out of Vietnam to live with his family in Connecticut until her parents made their way to the US several months later. Lan went to high school in Northern Virginia, and ultimately went on to earn her law degree from Yale. She is now a novelist and a professor at the Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman University in Orange, CA. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Monkey Bridge, was the first work of fiction published by a major publishing house about the Vietnam War written by a Vietnamese-American and has become a modern classic.

Robert Olen Butler reads his story 'Banyan' and talks to Ted Hodgkinson about how memory can be like compost and why every story is a search for an identity.

Mort Zachter offers an award winning memoir of a struggling immigrant family with the book, Dough. Pulitzer Prize winning author, Robert Olen Butler is back with another provocative discourse called Intercourse Stories. In T42 Cynthia Brian and Heather Brittany discuss how your order in the birth line-up affects your personality, your future, and your prosperity.

Predators in on-line dating with the Stella Donne Goddess Gals, Cynthia Brian and Heather Brittany is discussed. Pulitzer Prize recipient, Rovert Olen Butler, with 62 stories of the thoughts that go through a person's mind after their head has been servered. A season of killing, racial madness, and civil rights is chronicled in The Zebra Murders by Prentice Earl Sanders and Bennett Cohen.

Phong Nguyen is the author of three novels: Bronze Drum (Grand Central Publishing, 2022), Roundabout (Moon City Press, 2020), and The Adventures of Joe Harper (Outpost19, 2016), winner of the Prairie Heritage Book Award; and two short fiction collections: Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History (C&R Press, 2019) and Memory Sickness (Elixir Press, 2011), winner of the Elixir Press Fiction Award.Along with Robert Olen Butler, he is the co-editor of The Best Peace Fiction: A Social Justice Anthology and with Dan Chaon, he is the co-editor of Nancy Hale: On the Life and Work of a Lost American Master.His stories have been published in more than 50 national literary journals and anthologies, including Agni, Boulevard, North American Review, Massachusetts Review, and Ninth Letter.He teaches fiction-writing at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where he lives with his wife, the artist Sarah Nguyen.========================Welcome to The Vietnamese Podcast! I'm your host, Kenneth Nguyen. Join me on an exploration of Vietnamese experiences from all over the world.I served in the U.S. Marines in the 90's and graduated from the University of Southern California in 2000. Today, I work as an LA based producer and entrepreneur and am currently a founding partner at EAST Films.========================Please SUBSCRIBE and COMMENT to support the podcast!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevietnamesepodcastPage: https://www.facebook.com/thevietnamesepodcastTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thevietnamesepodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/nguyenkennethSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vietnamese-with-kenneth-nguyen/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Phong Nguyen is the author of three novels: Bronze Drum (Grand Central Publishing, 2022), Roundabout (Moon City Press, 2020), and The Adventures of Joe Harper (Outpost19, 2016), winner of the Prairie Heritage Book Award; and two short fiction collections: Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History (C&R Press, 2019) and Memory Sickness (Elixir Press, 2011), winner of the Elixir Press Fiction Award.Along with Robert Olen Butler, he is the co-editor of The Best Peace Fiction: A Social Justice Anthology and with Dan Chaon, he is the co-editor of Nancy Hale: On the Life and Work of a Lost American Master.His stories have been published in more than 50 national literary journals and anthologies, including Agni, Boulevard, North American Review, Massachusetts Review, and Ninth Letter.He teaches fiction-writing at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where he lives with his wife, the artist Sarah Nguyen.========================Welcome to The Vietnamese Podcast! I'm your host, Kenneth Nguyen. Join me on an exploration of Vietnamese experiences from all over the world.I served in the U.S. Marines in the 90's and graduated from the University of Southern California in 2000. Today, I work as an LA based producer and entrepreneur and am currently a founding partner at EAST Films.========================Please SUBSCRIBE and COMMENT to support the podcast!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevietnamesepodcastPage: https://www.facebook.com/thevietnamesepodcastTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thevietnamesepodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/nguyenkennethSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vietnamese-with-kenneth-nguyen/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy